“Uber is like the KFC of the restaurant world… it does not meet the needs of the corporate traveller”
Uber’s archrival Lyft is facing increasing competition from Curb. Brazil’s 99 has recently received a huge cash injection and is expanding rapidly. China’s leading ride-hailing app Didi is now available in English. Line Taxi has overtaken Uber as Japan’s biggest provider, covering more than 90 cities, while Ora is challenging Uber in India. GrabTaxi has an extensive network covering Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.
BUSINESS NEEDS However, as Groundscope chief executive officer John McCallion insists, that’s only part of the story. “In business travel in the ground transportation sector, travellers require an easy-to-book, cost-effective and reliable service that they can book the night before travel and go to bed knowing that
they will be picked up at 5am and delivered to the airport on time, and collected at their arrival airport in the US or Europe on time. The business traveller does not want to pay cash in the car or have to worry about where the driver will meet them upon arrival at a foreign airport. “Uber is like the KFC of the restaurant
world, in that it provides a service in central London and New York, but not one that par- ticularly meets the needs of the corporate traveller. First, Uber is not cheap – for any trip longer than 30 minutes it is actually more expensive than a taxi – and, second, it does not meet the needs of the corporate traveller or the corporate buyer. “Corporate buyers want discounted rates,
free waiting time at airports (particularly if the flight is delayed) and greater security. The other key requirement from corporate
clients is their need for detailed manage- ment information on taxi spend.” Craig Chambers, TBR Global Chauffeur-
ing’s chief executive, says that a shift in the travel market over the past year or so, with the increased use of app-based car providers, has brought corporate social responsibility into the spotlight. “While, traditionally, the focus has been on airlines and hotels, with increasing uncertainty in the world, businesses are acutely aware of the importance of being able to track their travellers’ full end-to-end journey and avoid them being ‘unaccounted for’ when they jump in a local taxi,” he says. “As well as guaranteeing a licensed
vehicle and a disclosed, professional driver, by ensuring a managed travel policy is in place leakage can also be reduced, so it makes good financial sense, too.” Travel buyer attitudes are changing
along with Lyft’s fortunes and Uber’s corporate culture. Maybe this will turn out to be an ‘annus mirabilis’ after all.
Dundee sets standard with ‘green’ taxis
UNLIKELY AS IT MAY SEEM, SCOTLAND’S FOURTH LARGEST CITY, DUNDEE, with a population of just under 150,000, has emerged as one of the world’s leaders in ‘green’ taxi services. Noted for its fruit cake, the so-called ‘City of Discovery’ now claims to have the UK’s largest fleet of eco-friendly, private-hire vehicles. With just 30 Nissan Leaf cars, operated by a company called
203020 Electric, it is a small start, but it is an indication of things to come. In the corporate travel sector, environmental issues have slipped down the agenda in recent years, but they are almost bound to re-emerge as a major concern. And other leading car brands have green plans: Jaguar Land Rover plans to electrify its entire model range within the next ten years; Honda says that two-thirds of its new cars will be ‘alternatively-fuelled’ by 2025; Audi says it will introduce three new electric models before 2020. Where Dundee leads, London is certain to follow, and on a rather larger scale. From January next year, all black cabs – most of which, it seems, are anything but ‘black’, festooned as they are with multi-coloured liveries promoting everything from Sandals Resorts to Vodafone – will have to be able to run on electric power.
The diktat is causing some problems. Metrocab, which makes most of London’s traditional taxis, has already produced ‘green’ electric-powered vehicles – with a small petrol-driven
76 BBT July/August 2017
back-up engine – but there is only one high-speed charging point in the whole of the capital. Other power points do exist, but they run at very low power levels, taking several hours to charge an ‘electric’ taxi. Transport for London (TfL) is struggling to fulfil an £18 million scheme to install 75 ‘super-chargers’ by the end of this year, followed by a further 75 in 2018, and double that number by the turn of the decade. The trouble is that even with 300 charging points – one for every 80 currently licensed taxis – there is inevitably going to be a ‘refuelling’ back-up. A fully-charged electric taxi will have a range of 100 miles; London taxis average 120 miles a day, and re-charging will take at least 30 minutes. For eco-friendly travel managers, this presents a major
problem. While ‘electric’ black cabs have to be the norm in London by January next year, there are big questions as to whether their drivers – through no fault of their own – will be able to fulfil demand. There are two possible answers. The first, jokes Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, might be to hang around the one charging point outside St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch. The other would be to move to Dundee. Good luck with that.
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